MSOC vs. the Bradford Pear Tree

Hi, I’m an employee of AT&T and the following is my opinion! And my opinion of MSOC is that it was, and is a tremendous waste of our stockholder’s money. Our company landscapers spent all their money on Bradford Pears instead of the good stuff. Let’s face it, whoever was in the meeeting when this monstrosity was purchased needs to man-up and fall on the sword. As a company, we’ve got major problems on our hands and MSOC seems to be at the root of it.

The problems are numerous. First of all, like all the people who push Bradford Pears, most tech’s lie to make their numbers! Yeah, it’s true. Some managers even tell which codes give you more time. Remember, our numbers are our manager’s numbers too… they want them to be good! Management ratings depend on it. They become tyrants to people who don’t go along with “getting results up”.

Bradford pears won’t grow well in many soils. MSOC doesn’t work well with an outside telephone environment! How can MSOC “know” how long it should take me on a noisy telephone trouble with a copper line three miles long? You say, “it all averages out”. No, it doesn’t, and if it does, you adjust the bar higher so we can’t clear it next month! Solving a trouble issue on a customer’s line is akin to a detective working a crime scene. Sometimes, the culprit is holding the gun upon arrival. Other times, it takes repeated trips and interviews to give the customer justice. Those are called repeat reports in the telephone industry and they hurt your numbers. We have techs who keep up with whether or not their repeats or “no accesses” are high as to which they can use to close a trouble. If they don’t have many repeats, they close out the trouble report and let the customer call back later. If their repeats are already high, they will no-access the trouble and let someone else close it out. Here’s an old fashioned concept… what about just TELLING THE TRUTH! Again, like a Bradford, it looks good, but you REALLY don’t know what’s going on. The inside is full of rot.

Bradford pears can’t stand bad weather. They tend to break apart. MSOC is similar. We were told after the recent tornadoes, those numbers would be thrown out. The system just couldn’t handle the storm. We have the same trouble with DLC systems in trouble. The repeats kill our numbers for months… you know, weakness in the limbs cause a big cleanup!

Bradford pears are maintenance intensive due to bad soils, stormy weather, and disease. They are time and money consuming. The same goes for MSOC! Think of all the managers both direct and on staff whose time is spent trying to manipulate MSOC data. It would be nice to know, how much total money is spent maintaining this flowering tree. Add to it, all the meetings and scoldings where our focus is on MSOC and not just “good customer service”. We had a tech recently whose numbers were bad and he was under pressure to pick up the pace. Finally, some genius discovered his GPS unit was not reporting travel time correctly. You guys should really be ashamed for pushing this on us!

Bradford pears constantly sprout new growth all around, adding to the tree mayhem. Those little buggers come up everywhere creating new problems. It’s a constant fight to keep it under control and alive. I finally gave up with the one in my front yard last year. I put gas and oil in the chainsaw and in just a short time my yard was reclaimed. It looks really good… GONE!